


The Dreamers Who Never Sleep

by adeadhouseplant



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: A bit sad, Historical, M/M, Multi Chapter, Not Beta Read, Not The Old Guard (Comics) Compliant, Original Character(s), Pre-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Slow Burn, not canon, or at least not very canon, period
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25511629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeadhouseplant/pseuds/adeadhouseplant
Summary: The story of a boy who leaves his family to become a priest, a crusader,  and the companion of an evenly lost soul.-A multi-chapter story from Nicoló's point of view.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1: The Swordmaker

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone, I decided to write this after watching the movie and reading the comics. This story is written in Nicky's point of view, starting with him joining the crusades.
> 
> There isn't much sex (for those who look for that kind of fiction, so you all aren't disappointed :), but a lot of romance, "angst", it can be scary and it contains a lot of more or less graphic violence and mentions thereof. I hope you have fun if you decide to read it, enjoy, and perhaps leave some kudo's or comments? Thank you for reading! :)
> 
> By the way, here is a playlist which serves me as the soundtrack to this fic: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6b1M3joxsICs1Vl6mX3AQ5?si=RCnLzIcaQ-Wa3CfRlTFNcQ)

## “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing

## and rightdoing there is a field.

## I'll meet you there.

## When the soul lies down in that grass

## the world is too full to talk about.”

— Rumi

  
  


_Heartbeat._ Breathe! _When you’re young, and you just found out how nothing that happens to you will hurt you, all the fear you’ve had for so long will manifest itself in anger and that will make you feel powerful to an unbearable extent. Then, when you age, it fades away like a quiet song, you hear it and forget it. You forget it until centuries pass, and soon the anger returns because nothing matters, so you think._

Penetrating blue above him. The sky was so blue, it hurt. Wheat swayed above him and he counted the clouds. He reached out to touch the spikes, they tickled his palms. Nothing but wind. A man called for him and first he thought that it must be his father’s voice echoing through the fields. Upon sitting up, he noticed it wasn’t his father but brother Andrea strolling about, looking rather disgruntled as Nicoló escaped the morning routine, as usual. 

Nicoló shot up and spied through the wheat. When he first arrived here, in these brown walls with a bunch of men of all ages who looked as constipated as though they didn’t take a shit for ten days, he felt a strange sense of belonging. _You’re a young small man, aren’t you?_ Andrea said and his green eyes looked at him with joy. Joke was on him that Nicoló was neither young nor small but at least they didn’t ask any questions. He got that a lot. _You’re a young man, brother!_ He wasn’t. 

He stood in the wheat and waited for Andrea to find him standing where he did. Andrea sighed and shook his hands at the sky, as if God up there listened to his prayers. With his hands hanging to the sides of his body, Nicoló waited zestless. 

“Where have you been, _boy_ ?” He still called him that after all those years. By now, Nicoló was his equal after years of apprenticeship but Andrea, Andrea he insisted in calling him _boy_ . Sometimes he called him _asinello_ instead, but only if Nicoló had said something snarky, cocky, or demeaning which he did more than he should. Andrea created an aura of comfort around him and he never bothered to break it.

He sighed. “Here.”

“I can see that!”

“Then why do you ask?”

Andrea looked at him with fatherly scorn. “Well, we have been worried about you!”

“I fell asleep, I apologise.”

Andrea nodded, accepting the words, and gestured to follow him. Nicoló did so without further ado. 

At times, he missed home. He missed the large trees in summer as the area here consisted only of fields. He missed the salty breeze coming from the sea and his mother joking that his hair was too tousled. _Bedhead._ He always kept it short, but his mother never minded. His father didn’t either, but Nicoló knew that deep down, he regretted how every single one of his children got married while his youngest didn’t. So, what was he to do other than lying and saying he would join a faithful band of brothers to the north? A good excuse, his family wouldn’t have to explain to the village why their child wouldn’t be married, and he himself would not wither away alone on a goat farm. 

A voice uttered his name behind him all the while Andrea spoke, which was nothing more than a spheric whisper to him as he glanced across his shoulder to find a girl in a white dress standing there. She waved at them and he looked at her: he knew her once, but she was never real.

He left her behind in fields of gold.

  
  


Back home at sundown, he sat and looked at the cross before him. He felt restless. This was not the place where he belonged, he thought to himself and watched the fire on a candle dance in innocent bliss. He wished to be that fire. What if he ran away from that fire? 

The walls clung cold to his body and the cold crept up his legs, it made his hairs rise as though a ghost of the past attempted to fasten him onto the bench. Sometimes, he’d sit here for too long. 

His fingers danced on the brown linen that covered his thighs and the music they danced to wasn’t a known music, the sound had yet to be invented. The day he came here, as Andrea welcomed him with open arms, they didn’t interrogate him at all except for asking if he believed in God, and so he said that he did - but did he really?

His parents raised him to believe that; to believe in the flame before his eyes, that God had a plan for him but if he did, then why did he make him the way he was? What did have God planned for him? He groaned and his fingers stopped dancing. Restless again, his shoulders twitched. He chewed on his tongue and rose quickly to hustle across stone and sneak back to the hospital where they cared for the sick. People died here daily, and he hoped that God wouldn’t punish him for taking the clothes of a late merchant without family and with a heavy load of confessions. The village needed them because they offered the right words at the right time, the people liked them, they counted them as part of the family and here he took someone’s belongings to serve himself.

 _A bag. Sneak to the kitchen, steal some food_. Nicoló listened up as he heard footsteps, but they soon disappeared and so he changed his clothes and made his way to exit the building. He left this, too, behind in fields of gold. 

“Where are you going?” a brother asked. A young one, young as he was when he came here. Young as he was when he left his father and mother behind on their farm. 

“Away.”

“You can’t just leave.” 

“Watch me.” He walked on without another word. 

“Nicoló!”

But someone put his hands on the young man’s shoulder, and Andrea looked at the boy and smiled poignantly. “God has a plan for all of us, and perhaps his plan for him is to leave us.”

“And you let him, along with the belongings of another man?”

“The need for freedom, my child, is greater than any other force there is besides love, and both coexist with God. And those belongings mean nothing anymore to a man who is now free, himself. So they might assist someone else.”

  
  
  
  


_The anger increases when you see what the world is actually made of: piss and blood everywhere. God wasn’t here to save anyone, and I have learned that too late. I’ve learned that as I alone sat in the rain and watched a man murder another over a bunch of coins. Humanity made me sickly angry because they were grey and sad. Then I looked into the eyes of a child and the light shone there brightly. It shone so beautifully that it forced a smile on my face. Smiles were nothing but empty vessels of feigned empathy. We smile not to smile but to appear merciful. A genuine smile is rare. And when the child stood before me I remembered that the world would raise them to kill me in a few years. I loved the child, but hated the man they would become. Have I myself become that man? I’ve been running away from this man and ignored that I have always been the exact thing I hated._

“It’s called a beshnoodle!” 

“A what?” Nicoló looked down at the boy who held up a cloth endorsed with many knots. Apparently, this must have been a _beshnoodle._

He took it and looked at it. “A strange beast. Tell me, where did you find it?”

“It comes from the forest!”

“What does a beshnoodle do?”

“It eats raw onions and curses bad people, and protects you because it loves you unconditionally.”

“How do I get one for myself?” 

“It will find you!” The boy ripped the thing back out of his hand and ran away.

Nicoló watched him tumble about and adjusted his stolen coat. Well, _stolen_ was a bad word. He borrowed it and soon, returned it when he had seen enough of this world. So he told himself. If he returned, would Andrea forgive him? 

The streets were busy today, and people tried to sell their goods to him but he wasn’t interested and mainly so because he lacked the funds. Should he beg for food? Nicoló took his last apple from his bag and cleaned it on his shirt. Around the corner stood a few well-dressed men, in colors others didn’t wear, and they talked to the townsfolk with nasal intensity. Nicoló looked at them from under his hooded coat and bit on his apple. The men talked about how all men should follow the word of Christ, they said many more things, many empty, meaningless things which he all understood. They were as empty as the vessel they walked the earth with. Strange, suffocating words that somehow carried a lot of pathos and that made people emotional. To him, it seemed like a welcome challenge. He moved through the crowd to have an even better look as rain began to drizzle down on weary heads. 

“How, when you think of yourself to be strong and in favor of God,” Nicoló spoke up with pieces of apple in his mouth, “do you need to recruit farmers and beggars for your war?” 

One of them, a man with dark hair and bright brown eyes, looked at him from his spot. His tall appearance stood in contrast to the dull surrounding and his fellows. A subtle magnificence wrapped him up in velvet ambience. He reminded Nicoló on the altar pieces his brother created, depicting Pontius Pilatus and this man may have had a lot of blood on his hands, too. No rain could wash that off.

“And who are you to _challenge_ me and my word?”

“Why would I not?” He scoffed. “Because you wear expensive and colorful garments, I should believe what you’re saying? I trust any pickpocket among this crowd more than I trust you.” He took another bite.

The man walked over and looked at him. He was a bit too close. A bit taller than him, as well. He smelled too clean. Rich people didn’t know what life consists of because they didn’t know the meaning of struggle, and with that they didn’t know the meaning of Christ.

“What is your name, boy?”

“I am not a _boy_ , and my name is not important because I will die, for you like many others did before me, a senseless death. Tell me: what will my death change and I may pick up a sword.”

“Freedom. You will gain freedom and you will spread the word of Christ.”

“He can speak for himself.” He winked. As he turned away unimpressed, he felt something poke his chest: the tip of a sword’s grip, offered to him by a nobleman. An aristocrat, someone with power, someone who decided the fate of others below him, one of the kind he despised because they caused nothing but misery.

“If you’re fighting as spirited as you speak, perhaps you should consider picking up a sword.”

Strangely charming, the nobleman smiled at him and the hand holding the apple downed slowly. He looked at the sword, the hand, and then his eyes trailed back upward along the arm to his face. 

“Are you quite certain, milord? My tongue is sharp. I have more wits than half of those empty sacks of flour you’re walking around with. I’ll outshine them in a fortnight.”

“I would like to see that!” The nobleman now seemed amused, his fellows appeared to disagree with his mindset. 

“Where will I have to be?” 

The nobleman pushed his sword back into its sheath and looked victorious. People, who gathered around them behind Nicoló, sighed. He was never afraid of consequences. What others thought to be dangerous, he found joyful. What would this man have done otherwise? Kill him? So be it.

He wasn’t afraid of death, either. 

  
  
  


Nicoló joined a family as the last of five children. His brothers went to marry, they went to learn, one of them became a painter. Who was he, left behind with his parents? Nothing but a nameless child. One of the many lost and forgotten about. So he left home, and so he travelled north where he found a new, temporary home with people who didn’t know him, and yet appreciated his existence. How could he throw that away, cut it off like a rotten limb? Suddenly, he felt bad about running away. Andrea once told him that he ought not to judge people for what they do, that everything they do has reason and the only thing he could offer them is understanding and forgiveness. Did he pray for him?

He prayed, too but not for himself, he only did that once in a while. Although he believed that all his prayers remained unheard and all he had was a bit of luck here and there. Luck, finding easily persuaded monks to take him in for who he was, luck in not being beheaded in a crowded street. Luck, in finding this place after a long walk.

There were only men, talking, speaking of pilgrimage, speaking of redemption, speaking of a Holy Land but he wondered: _child, tell me, which land is holy when it’s built on the blood of a thousand corpses?_ He joined nevertheless. What else was there? Maybe this way he would find the secret of his purpose? People in the street asked him if he was a follower of Christ, and so he shaved his head. People asked him if he could listen to their laments, and so he hid his face. He always hid it under a hood to avoid eye contact. 

There was luck again and people welcomed him here, too, and so he joined those people who truly believed that murder would wipe away their sins. Curious. To him it didn’t make sense. Perhaps he could change something, perhaps he could be there and convince them that certain dichotomies were a construct created by men in power who wanted to take advantage of them and of the people who fell for it to achieve redemption? Or at least he could be there in their last moment and make them forgive themselves in their final moments.

He joined those people and the sky that evening glowed deep red as the sun settled in its nightbed. He joined them believing that there was a chance for change. Little did he know it would never come, but that was something he yet had to learn. 

So, months later, he sat at a fire and he listened to those who joined as he did, lost people with no sense of humanity within them. How could someone with no empathy be a follower of Christ? He stirred his stew. 

The man he met in the village, in his fine robes and his total ignorance of a poor person’s life, hadn’t talked to him since. Another affirmation of what Nicoló assumed to be true. He took his bowl and left the gathering around the fire to stare at the lights in the sky. Sometimes he wondered if God watched him because he thought that Nicoló’s life was a divine comedy, here, with his stew, contemplating his very existence. His hair grew out and after so many years he forgot what it feels like to have tousled strands blocking his view. They got stuck in his lashes and he blew them away just for them to return to him like little stray dogs. 

“May I?” He heard a voice and glanced to the left. Gervase, so was his name he found out, stood and waited. _No_ . Nicoló just gave him a look. He wanted to be alone and think about the wrong choices he made in his life. Gervase sat, taking his silence as a _yes,_ misinterpreting his looks. _At least he cannot read my mind, which is progress._

“To be fair, I do enjoy my time alone.” Nicoló grumbled.

“Then I shall leave again.” Gervase said, ready to leave him.

“No, milord, stay.” He looked ahead. “May I help you?”

Gervase sat comfortably next to him in the damp grass. 

“Perhaps so.” He smiled. Nicoló sensed it. “I wondered about you. Where are you from?”

“What does that matter?”

Silence. He felt eyes on him and gave in. “I was born and raised in Genova. My parents had a goat farm. I have four brothers. Anything else you would like to know, milord?”

Gervase snickered. “A goat farm? And here I thought you were of a different kind.”

“Why? Because I talk the way you talk? Commoners talk differently?”

“No. That’s not why. I assumed you were a clergy hiding in the cloth of a poor man.”

Nicoló ate his stew. “If I told you I were a priest, would that make a difference?”

Now he looked at Gervase and he saw his eyes lit up. He couldn’t quite analyse what this meant. 

“What did make you leave it behind?”

“That is, with all due respect, none of your business.”

“I like you, Nicoló di Genova, you are a very sharp-tongued man. A word of advice is, however, that you must tread carefully because perhaps you will cut yourself on your own blade.”

“If so, what does it matter. If God decides it’s my time to die, then so be it.”

“Hm. It would be a waste if it was too soon.”

Nicoló smacked his lips and looked away after Gervase winked at him. 

“Tell me about your family.” Gervase insisted. 

After a moment of silence, poking his stew with the spoon, Nicoló gave in his already gentle voice became even softer. “My father used to be a soldier, when he met my mother he wanted to be with her instead of his blade and he was allowed to because his superior liked him very much. He has always been a loyal, caring man, you must know. My mother is very passionate. She taught me how to punch people and where to punch them. Funny, since my father was the soldier. My brothers are all very different. They all look like my mother. What about your family?”

Gervase smiled. He rested his arms on his knees. “I’m an illegitimate child. There isn’t much to tell.”

“There must be something.”

“I envy you for your family. Such luck is rare.”

“Hm.”

“I leave you to your stew. Enjoy it.”

“I already burned my tongue, worry not: it can only get worse.”

Gervase laughed and left him behind. What a peculiar man.

  
  
  


_The river runs silently through a dark green landscape. Hear it trickle? Do you hear the birds on each side of the river, upon the trees whose arms bend down under the weight of the little birds? A wind crawls through the leaves, it makes you shiver. You stand at the shore, you feel the wind. What does that do? Look into the darkness between the trees, the shadows of night, no light. No light but the moon. And in between those trunks, you see something move but you can’t quite tell what it is. A girl in a white dress? The garment glowing in contrast with the darkness embracing her. An old man in a long, grey coat? Are they laughing at you? You cannot see because they lack faces. Just blank, flat plains you see. The Devil dances in their voices. But who is the Devil, and was he wrong after all?_

Nicoló woke up sweating, frozen on his side, staring into the forest that surrounded them. He hated sleeping alone. Back when he was little, his brothers would sleep next to him and comforted him as he had nightmares and there were plenty. In his dreams he saw many worlds and many creatures, sometimes they seemed so real that he believed he was not dreaming. He stared into the faces of monsters, of strangers, of people who seemed too realistic to be dreams. Once he felt someone dying and that pain lingered for days. He rose off his makeshift bed and looked around: the fire died, people slept. One man walked around. Nicoló moved up, groaning because his back and stomach hurt. _Oh, no, not now._ He moved around and hoped it would cease. It never did, though. It came charging in like a bull, gored him up, and left him bleeding on the ground.

The sweat of the dream still stuck to his skin and he stared into the dark forest. Green leaves swung in a soft breeze, droplets of an early morning’s mist rolled down, falling into moss and underwood. A river nearby trickled. Trees cracked and moaned. He walked toward the river to wash his face and as he did, he heard wood cracked by footsteps. Those weren’t his own. He stopped and looked around. 

Nobody but him walked this area and so he blamed his imagination and the bad dream on it as he crouched at the shore and washed his face with ice old water. He dropped his palms and watched the surface. Some fish swam in the water, swiftly rushing through rocks. Then he looked back up to the other side where, as the sun rose, fog became brighter and its density decreased. He saw someone stand there in a gown, but he couldn’t make out a face. 

A whisper arose but it consisted of a dozen different voices. 

“Quis costodiet ipsos custodies, fratem servabit te.” 

He looked confused and narrowed his eyes, stepping into the water as he tried to make out a face but it seemed like the person didn’t have one? He tilted his head confused and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. The girl in the gown faded into the fog and he frowned, twisting around to return to the rest of the group as a blunt force hit him. Right into his stomach where it already hurt. He stumbled backwards and landed in the water. He scared the fish as he landed on a rock and rolled his eyes annoyed because that was exactly the pain he needed today. Then he blinked and looked up to the attacker, just seeing a person dressed in dark cloth aiming to hit him again. Was that his final day, dying in a river because he’s been curious and clumsy? He rolled away to dodge the hit, then pushed himself off the ground and pulled out his sword. He never killed someone before. What was that like? He should have prepared for that because the moment he slid into this armor, the would come a day he had to kill someone - silly of him to think he could avoid that. Who was the attacker? He tried to find out as they fought, splashing water and scaring the fish. Birds soared to the sky and as the sun rose from behind the treetops, he ended the fight by pushing the blade into the chest of the person who surprised him. Their eyes were dark green. Grasping their slowly disappearing life with desperation. He pulled his sword out and they fell on the pebble. A thud. Blood created a bed for them to rest. 

So that is what it is like, he thought. He didn’t feel anything. He stared at the sun and the light hurt his eyes, so he closed them and rubbed his face with the free hand.

Nicoló heard feet approach: fast, anxious, troubled. Gervase stopped himself in an abrupt manner at the sight of the corpse and the man holding a bloody sword, the tip of which touched the ground. 

“What happened?” Gervase asked out of breath.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Nicoló said annoyed. _May God forgive me for my word choices_.

  
  
  


Days later, as the temperature got hotter, as people became delirious, as the weather kept changing, they walked. Or rather he walked. He walked and wondered why he walked in the first place. The dying eyes haunted him. On the back of his horse hung a sick man and he would die soon, anyway. An infection. He nursed him and tried to heal it but to no avail. 

Two days ago, they slaughtered everyone hiding at an outpost after finding out that the person who attacked him spied on them. A scout. Why did the scout attack him, though? Nicoló didn’t understand. He has killed more than one man now and he didn’t count the lives he took in the name of God. What did he think about him and his deed? Would he punish him for acting like his tool on a battlefield created by mankind? At the outpost, he looked into a tunnel filled with corpses. He looked at each face as he searched for survivors: one face after another staring at him wide-eyed. Cut wounds so deep, he could see the bone. Bodies without heads, without arms, without legs. Stomachs and lungs, feet and legs. As he walked, his leatherbound feet sunk into blood and piss. When people die, they let loose of anything their bodies held and all of it now flowed onto sandstone, sunk into it, and it was so much that left the floor wet. Sticky. Blood drying and thickening. He left footsteps. His sword scratched the tiles as he walked on. What was the meaning of this? Murdering others seemed wrong but would they think twice when facing him? They were all just mortals dancing on the stage to a divine comedy. He almost lost his faith that day.

Nicoló stared into the sun because he deserved pain.

Next to him, a rider joined. Gervase became his constant companion for whatever reason suited him. “Why do you walk, Nicoló?”

“Why do you ride? And why do you speak down to me as though I’m a child, milord?” He didn’t look up.

Gervase’s lips thinned and he cringed toward the sun, almost as if he had a short dialogue with it and the sun told him to get off the horse. Which he did and now he walked next to him. Why did he try so much to show Nicoló his words mattered? 

“You are aware that the man on your horse is dead?” Gervase said. “Why do you insist on carrying him? It won’t absolve your sins.”

Nicoló scoffed. “He was an eighteen year old boy.” He whispered. But that whisper radiated anger and it taunted Gervase. A dangerous whisper. “He left his mother alone with his six siblings, their father died years prior in battle. He left them behind because he thought it would honor his father if he did, he thought God would forgive him for whichever sin people like you make up for children like him to join your war. So, milord, what do you think shall I do with this boy’s body? Drop it here for the vultures to feed on? Feed on it myself? The latter would be very fitting ever since you seem to enjoy feasting on innocence.”

Gervase halted and stood in front of him. Nicoló was forced to stop and looked into his eyes. “Why are you here, milord?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Perhaps I believed in something good and doing something good, but that thought died, cut into a thousand pieces by men like you.” 

“You did what you did yourself, you’ve got all the knowledge required to make your own decisions. Don’t blame others for your own fragility.”

“ _Fragility…_ is that what you call empathy? Interesting.” He gave Gervase a once over. “Perhaps you should carry the dead bodies of children around for a while.”

Nicoló walked into the sun, following the others who went to settle for the night.

“I have two children.” Gervase said, standing still in the same spot. 

Nicoló inhaled. He paused in his walk and looked back. “Congratulations.”

Gervase opened his mouth but no words came out.

“Why do you tolerate everything I say? What kind of _fragility_ is this, milord?”

“Perhaps you are right?” 

“I am, milord, I always am.” He winked and walked on.

  
  


_Are you going to bury everyone you lose?_ He buried the boy nearby. He didn’t carry anything of value and neither did he know where his mother lived. She may never find out and has to live with uncertainty about her son's early fate. A terrible thought. He frowned and looked away. The blood of others still stuck to his clothes and he didn’t bother cleaning it because why would he need to, when everyday meant killing someone else. His thoughts dwelled in his parent’s house where they wandered and tried to hold memories of his childhood together like a plaid. More and more holes came to exist in this memory blanket, more holes he needed to repair, more and more pictures got lost right in front of him as he walked through a colorless house. His mother’s voice was nothing more than a hushed lullaby resounding and ricocheting through the room. Suddenly, he felt very angry and he wanted to punch someone.

Nicoló returned to the group, trying to understand what amused them so much and he faked a smile while his body felt such anger, he feared to combust at any minute. He inhaled as much air as his body allowed him to and held it for a few seconds. As he wanted to exhale, his eyes met those of Gervase and he was thankful for the burning campfire between them because it sucked in every single one of his emotions. Nicoló sat and then fell on his back, wrapping his body up in his cape because tomorrow, they’d arrive at the destination. How did nobody sleep yet?

He counted the stars. Nicoló pulled out a piece of cloth he held on to for several days now, hiding it underneath his bracer. One knot, two knots, he didn’t even look at how many knots he made. Then he sat it on his chest and covered it with his left hand. He closed his eyes and fell asleep soon after.

  
  


Gervase always made sure that Nicoló was under his command. He treated him better than the others and he also assumed it wouldn’t take long until someone thought how important he was. Nicoló didn’t want to be honored for anything, why did he care? He rode, hair dancing in the wind, looking down at his palm which held onto his necklace with the cross while his other hand held the reins of his horse. He looked up as Gervase called out his name but he didn’t understand what he said. They were supposed to charge now, or at least soon, why could he not control his attention and focus on what was said? 

Perhaps because the sky looked so beautiful tonight? Not a single cloud covered the lights up there, the only lights came from the city nearby, the fires, the warmth of others and their bodies suffocated him. Gervase turned around and looked at him, but everything moved so slow and he heard his own heartbeat instead. No sound but a constant beating inside his ribcage. He has become nothing more than a sword to someone. What else did he think he should be? 

Naturally, he followed Gervase and helped him behead people, he made sure limbs were cut off, someone died, and one more. As his arms hurt, he looked up at walls and watched arrows raining down on them, hitting others and setting them aflame. Dancing little flames screaming for God’s forgiveness. He did not think that God forgave them. Would he forgive him? He looked at his bloody sword and the few clean spots that reflected the flames. He forgot that he was in the middle of a fight and only remembered it as Gervase called his name and rushed toward him to kick someone far away enough.

He grabbed his arm and shook it roughly. “What is the matter with you?” He yelled at Nicoló.

As there was no response, Gervase leaned the sword against him and grabbed Nicolós face with both of his hands but he couldn’t hear what he said. As a sudden movement struck, something in Gervase’s eyes changed and his grip became tighter around Nicoló’s face. He remembered that look: someone who clung to life. Blood came out of his mouth and that was when Nicoló finally woke out of his daydream because Gervase coughed the blood right at his face. His eyes captured Gervase unsteady on his legs, then travelled left to look for the one who hit Gervase. He found one of the _others_ , those people they attacked for the greater good. Why were they all so eager to kill each other? Did it matter. He has spent weeks thinking about that and came to no conclusion. Perhaps there was none and the one thing that mattered was killing each other. Now he felt angry for more reasons which finally manifested themselves within him and he raised his sword.

He headbutted his opponent first and as he struggled, hit him with his blade but the man was faster than he expected. Nicoló was angry because people were egoistic, and he hit him on the head but the helmet protected him. He was angry because people didn’t understand that they were supposed to love, not kill each other, and he defended himself from a hard strike against him. He fell to the ground, another hit at his body and he couldn’t feel his left arm anymore. Did the other man cut it off? Should he look? He moved his blade up as the other one wanted to haul, but instead fell on his blade. He still hauled. Suddenly the world turned black. 

  
  
  


Burned flesh. He sneezed. Then he felt pain rushing through him like lighting, and his loud groan was the thunder that followed. He pushed someone off his body and rolled around into the opposite direction. He still had both arms, and his head didn’t bleed. Confused, he looked around. Still on all fours, he glanced aside as he saw his opponent move and complain in his native tongue. He could have sworn that his arm was cut off and before he could even try to see what happened, someone kicked his side and gained his attention. Nicoló was still angry and he searched for his sword but couldn’t find it. There were enough bodies around to take one from and he grabbed one blade from a man who burbled next to him. His strike hit the other on the shoulder and blood sprayed into his face. The many times he had someone else’s blood on his face by now was ridiculous. He hit him again, and again, and again until the blade rushed parallel along his shoulders. Then he saw nothing anymore. After some time, he woke up again and thought this must have been one of those realistic nightmares he kept having the past days, but no girl in a white gown appeared. No one asked him if the stars in the sky represented the souls of those who weren’t allowed in heaven beside God. Nicoló touched his neck and found his body intact. What a wicked trick. At this point, he wished that God would let him die because all of the things he has seen the past weeks and months reminded him that it wasn’t worth living in this world where bad things were valued more than good things, but who was he to make such a distinction.

He looked for the other man, who, as he thought he was dreaming, seemed to be some kind of allegory. Nicoló found him, breathing as well and kept hitting him.

“I’m fucking tired.” He screamed although the other wouldn’t understand his language anyway. Nicoló listed everyone and everything he hated loudly as they fought. “I hate people. I hate this fucking place. I hate the sun, I hate all of these arrogant, arse-licking aristocratic demons who spawned out of Satan’s putrid arse! Fuck you and fuck your fathers.” The other man didn’t seem to exhaust just yet while around them, the corpses multiplied and the flames rose.

He charged at his _dance partner_ and pushed the sword right through his chest upward toward his head. What a strangely relieving feeling. He should have tried that more often. At the same moment, something on his left side bored into him, and his lung hurt as it never hurt before. He looked at the other and his eyes did not look like the eyes of the first man he killed, neither did they look like Gervase’s. They were proud, strong, reflecting fire and they held him hostage for a long while, until he couldn’t breathe anymore, until he tasted blood in his mouth. Yet he held onto the grip of his sword, and the free hand of his opponent held the grip with him. Time stood still, ashes twirled in the air of an early morning as he heard his mother sing a lullaby. A haunted memory before he fell into velvet darkness, again.

His tongue wetted his dry lips. Nicoló tasted blood and opened his eyes, finding himself staring up at a starry nightsky. How long would this night last? How long until he woke up from this dream? Did he dream after all? He noticed a bright streak at the horizon. It wasn’t even night anymore.

“Just let me fucking die!” He screamed and groaned as he lay on his back. “Is that your punishment?” He addressed the sky.

“God can’t hear you.”

A voice. Who was that? “Shut up!”

Then a movement showed to his right which announced a life next to him. A hand pushed a sword up and held onto the grip. He looked there and found a curved blade stuck in the mudd. “No.” he said.

The other man complied and dropped the sword.

“You are very angry.” The other man said.

“Yeah, well.” he felt uncomfortable. This wasn’t a dream? Then why didn’t he die? Why did he wake up again and again? How did the other understand him? Befuddled, Nicoló slowly moved up. He carefully rose because his body felt weird, it felt good, but he was afraid of breaking it. Voices in the distance lured him to join them, but he didn’t want to. Where was Gervase? Did everyone die? Nicoló picked up his sword and hobbled toward the horizon.

“Where are you going?” The other man asked. He, as well, stood by now and watched Nicoló walk into the distance, not toward the city. Not toward where his people came from. Away.

“Fuck you!” Nicoló called out.

  
  


_I loved the child, but hated the man they would become. Have I myself become that man? I’ve been running away from this man and ignored that I have always been the exact thing I hated._

_I ask myself that again. And again, and again, until the words hurt and cut into my skin to cause a bleeding that won’t cease._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2: Anqā

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicoló and Yusuf decide to travel together for the time being as they still try to figure how to handle their new situation, and slightly bond in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this transition chapter, I mainly write about the bonding and how the experiences of the past months affected Nicoló. As aforementioned: I write in his POV because I'm most comfortable with that. If you think: hey, I like [that] but perhaps you could mention more of [this], go ahead! I like getting ideas especially for multichapter stories.
> 
> I might also want to mention that I, as a trans man, liked the idea that Nicoló is transgender, too. If you don't like this headcanon then here is your chance to leave. :) Perhaps you already noticed as I added some of my own experiences and little hints. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and leave some feedback or just a kudo if you liked it. Or follow me on Twitter and say hi, and maybe share thoughts?

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

—Langston Hughes

_Through the streets of the city ran a stream of people, like blood pushed through veins by your heart. Nonstop, a little slower when you’re calm, faster when you’re excited. We lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building, it was 1931, memories existed in greyscale. In the opposite building lived an old man by himself; he must’ve been at least 60. His beard grew grey and white and covered his chest, on his head he often wore a flat cap. On Sundays, he wore a suit. I lit a cigarette and watched him feed the pigeons which came to sit on his window sill or the balcony every day, expecting to be fed and he followed their expectations. Every day. Every week. When the sun slowly descended into a bed made out of rooftops, he showed up and smiled at his friends. Genuine. Caring. A memorial to something that never existed on its own. He grew older and I didn’t. Sometimes I wonder when exactly he died and how the birds coped with his loss. Did the world ever recover from this?_

He stared at the horizon, distorted by a mirage, saw a caravan pass by somewhere in the distance - or were those silhouettes riders? The black dots moved along an orange sun, hovering across the reflection of something nonexistent. His sword’s tip kissed the ground as he lumbered toward the horizon and the sound of metal scratching the rocky ground sounded louder than it should inside his head. Nicoló’s sword left a trail in the thin layer of sand and a man on a horse followed it confused. Another horse trailed them all as he watched Nicoló walk. Of course Nicoló noticed him long ago. However, he frowned deeply and kept on trudging.

“Hey!” the man behind him called. He hasn’t said anything for a while now and trailed Nicoló. He heard a sigh. “I am sorry that I killed you and your friend.”

“He wasn’t my friend!” Nicoló blinked into the sun, stood still, then turned right. He wasn’t dead either. Why did he not die? He should have died. Why did he not die but Gervase did? Did he actually die? Nicoló should have checked that. Maybe he was undead. He remembered a story Andrea told new arrivals to scare them. Maybe he was Brendan and this was some strange test. Was this place actually a whale? Or was he Judas, clinging to a rock, lamenting his own fate?

“Alright.” A pause. “Hey, curd man. Where are you going?” It wasn’t a question, really. He probably knew where Nicoló headed towards. _What did he just call me?_ The world rested on his shoulders and pushed down on him, suffocating him - or was that the heat?

“I’m looking for a very high rock to jump down from because I don’t believe anything that happened last night.” He walked on and after some time he arrived at a cleft in between the mountains. 

“You are going to jump from there?” The other one pointed at the spot. Nicoló finally turned around to face the other man and saw him in the light for the first time: long curls, a pair of brown eyes that caught the sunlight and reflected it. Trapped in there, the rays set his face aflame with a joyful smile stuck in there, capturing onlookers. Smiling without moving the lips. Genuine.

“I believe in natural philosophy!” Nicoló’s face crunched.

“You do?” The man seemed genuinely surprised, yet Nicoló sensed some snark in his tone of voice. “I would not have guessed. You look rather… uncivilized.”

“It was nice meeting you, farewell.” Nicoló turned around and just jumped down. The flight lasted way too long and then everything hurt. When he fell down, he thought about whatever his mother would be doing right now? Would his father try to catch goats? Did Andrea run around, frantically praying for Nicoló’s redemption? Darkness.

 _Do you know the name of this lullaby? About the butterfly and the deer?_ A strange scent of herbs, something wet on his face, a song. This voice was not his mother’s. A wind caressed his face and he reached his hand up toward his head to feel something wet there. He touched it and led the hand back into sight: blood. Nicoló swatted a fly away from his eyes as he returned to his senses. He moved up and leaned on his elbows. He found himself between high mountains and trees grew here, too, water flowed through a little oasis a traveler rarely found on their journey. Shadow covered him and his eyes followed a merry white butterfly. Now, where was the deer?

“Good morning, curd man.” A voice.

Nicoló dropped down on his back and rolled on his side, still leaning on one elbow. He gave the other man an intense look somewhere between a hateful glare and a gaze of wonderment. The other man looked at him. “Do you want some tea?”

Nicoló followed his arm and found the hand preparing tea. In between rocks. Just like that.

“I’ve been sitting here for a while and watched you after you fell down from up there. Your body was in so many pieces! I collected them all and covered you because people might find it odd to see me next to a dismembered corpse. You’ve got quite a big brain for a Christian!”

Then he kept stirring.

Nicoló just looked. One of the horses licked his head and shoved all of his hair on one side up. He didn’t move. 

“I also cut off one of my fingers to see what happens, and it healed back together! The wonder. I almost ate my own shit.” He was done stirring. “Now, do you want some tea after this harrowing experience or not?”

Nicoló stood up and walked away. “I will be right back.”

“Are you going to do this again?”

“Yes.”

He left the man behind with an even more confused expression. He heard him whisper: “What a strange man.”

Not much later, Nicoló woke up again and again, or still, he stirred tea. “This time, your brain splattered all over my horse because she was too close to where you landed. Can you be more careful next time?” 

Three times now and every single time, he woke up in one piece. Nicoló bent forward, his palms on his thighs, looking at the little river. He wanted to throw up. The scent of herbs increased the urge but he never got to actually do the deed. So he turned around and thought that tea wouldn’t be bad. 

“How do you speak my language?”

“Oh, boy, have you heard of travel?”

 _Why does everyone call him a boy?_ “No! I just suddenly appeared in this area all the way from Genova!” 

Nicoló’s mood was a bit tense due to the circumstances and more. His emotions rushed through him like a fire and he hated it. Hunger. No hunger. Thirst. Something to hold on to. Perhaps a nap? He couldn’t decide. Punching someone, another option.

“You are a very talented man!”

He stayed silent. Not many words remained on his exhausted mind to reply to him anymore and he thought this to be unusual because his mind tended to be sharp and quick with his responses. Now, fatigue overwhelmed him. His eyes fixated on the ground and he watched a bug crawl from the rocks on the right to the water on the left. The man opposite of him stretched his arm out toward Nicoló with a small cup of tea. He looked at it and moved to take it. Their hands touched as he did and the man’s hands were warm, unlike his ice cold pair. He wanted to remain like that and feel this warmth for a while. He missed warmth. He missed someone touching his shoulder or even embracing him for just the fracture of a second. Nicoló pulled his arm back and smelled on the tea.

“I poisoned it.” The other said stone-cold sober.

Nicoló looked up across the brim just when he wanted to sip on it. 

Then the man laughed. “I am just joking.” He also drank. 

Nicoló groaned. What has he gotten himself into...

Although his mind withered away, unlike his body, he wanted to distract himself with finding out about the other person ever since they shared the same fate. 

“What’s your name?” He asked.

The other one’s eyes met his, warm and deep. He looked perfectly perky. “My name is Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani. What is yours?”

Nicoló inhaled. What should he say? _My name is Nicoló._ That sounded very sad. “My name is Nicoló.”

Secretly, though, he was very sad. He reminisced about where he stayed for the past eight years. Fields spread wide and few trees were scattered around an area that ended in mountains. The mountains guarded the fields and sometimes, when wind rushed through the clefts, he could hear the mountains sing. The sound of wind rushing through mountains was the most beautiful thing to him. Then he sat here in the dark and listened to the windless noises of the night. Nicoló remembered that he didn’t have anything anymore except for his sword and the things he wore. Then the beshnoodle reappeared on his mind. All of his clothes were damaged due to the night before and his voluntary jump off the mountains. Should he change? 

“You aren’t hungry?” Yusuf then asked.

Nicoló didn’t say a word and rolled around to face the wall. It smelled strange down here, like dung and hot stone, but that’s still better than the scent of burned human flesh. 

“I’ve met a fortune teller once, and she looked at me, she cursed, then he took my hand and said: child! One day you will meet a strange person who falls from the sky tree times and who never eats. I didn’t believe her! I should have in order to prepare myself for this moment.”

“Can you stop lying? It interferes with what I believe.”

“Don’t you people believe in things that aren’t real?”

“I am here to sleep, not to argue.”

“Who said I wanted to argue?”

“Normally, when you begin a conversation with someone you ask them a genuine question. Then the other person responds to it evenly minded in their tone.”

“An interesting view on things.”

“It’s not my fault people aren’t able to do that. Now, may I sleep, your highness?”

“Of course, milord.”

He felt him move nearby and then the world fell silent, except for the horses and the fire, cracking, telling them a bedtime story. As he almost fell asleep, he heard Yusuf snore and he hit his chest with his elbow. Yusuf complained and rolled on his stomach. The snoring stopped. 

  
  
  


The best part of autumn was fog. Fog hid the sunlight from the world, fog embedded it in soft and gentle satin robes, it made it look like a dream. Every morning, before anyone else woke up, Nicoló took a stroll around the building and chased the last remnants of night. He walked through the fields and watched the sun go up, huddled in fog and kissing every single blade of grass, one by one. Sometimes though, he fell back asleep.

The other man, or Yusuf, still slept and he wondered how one could sleep with such dedication after a strange, intense day. He stared at him, as peaceful as a small child, on his back with his hands interlocked on top of his moving chest. Nicoló narrowed his eyes and since he still doubted everything to no real, he wondered whether this man existed. Maybe he made him up? One of the brothers in the monastery once began to make up people because of the things he went through in the past, it took them many years to unteach him certain things and help him recover. He felt more at ease then, but he never truly recovered. Did the same happen to him? Nicoló reached out and poked Yusuf’s arm with one finger. The sleeping man grumbled annoyed and remained in slumber. His skin underneath the clothes felt real?

Nicoló removed his hand and picked up a leaf from a nearby bush. What if he stabbed him to see what happens? He pulled the leaf apart. He kept staring for a long time until Yusuf woke up and worked to get himself through his sleepiness by collecting luggage and carrying it to the horses. 

“What are you planning, curd man?” Yusuf didn’t even look at him as he talked. “Will you lie down in this hole for the rest of what is going to be eternity?”

“I may.”

“Good luck with that.” 

Nicoló looked away and counted the plants coming out of the rock formations above them. Sun tried to reach the ground but wouldn’t succeed yet. Nicoló thought it only reached it when the sun stood in zenith. A shadow blocked the scarce light and a gloved hand showed up in front of his face. What was he supposed to do? Kiss it goodbye?

“Come on.” Yusuf said.

“Oh.” Nicoló finally understood what he meant. He wanted to stay here and pity himself for a little bit longer. Somehow though this hand looked very comforting. Nicoló took it and forced himself to get up. He groaned and complained like an old man who had to get off his chair to chase after his unruly grandchildren. Yusuf took it on himself to dust Nicoló off. How nice of him. 

In all this time, Gervase and his people tried to convince him and the others that men like him were unruly, dirty, and full of presumptive pettines when actually, it was people like them who emphasized on this stereotype. Nicoló, in his mental state of not caring anymore, thought that being horrible was an overall human trait and only a few individuals stood out to display the opposite. Him falling down the mountain did something weird to his brain. He let out a sarcastic snicker.

“I am sorry.” Nicoló said. “I’m going home.” He went to the second horse. “Do you need that? Oh, wait it’s probably not even yours.”

Yusuf looked a bit offended as Nicoló glanced back, awaiting an answer.

“You should probably change when you do.” Yusuf pointed at Nicoló’s gear and clothes.

“Why?” 

“Because to people in this area, this is perhaps rousing some … let us say, assumptions. I mean you fell down in it several times and I don’t know, but maybe they assume you’re a demon of some sort.”

“Oh, well.”

“Where is _home_?”

Why did he ask him those questions? He hated it. He didn’t want to befriend anyone or get attached although _attached_ was a big word for a small man like him. Nicoló secretly grew a little bit fond of Gervase for no reason. He noticed that as soon as he was gone.

Gervase never attempted to be a good man, he didn’t care much - so it seemed, and Nicoló wondered if this had been a fact or just a prejudice. A _presumptive idea_ formed in his petty head. Another hole in the blanket that should have kept him warm at night. Now he sat here on this horse, jumping down a mountain three times didn’t kill him and neither did any blade end the other man’s life and they were both at the end of their wits when it came to that. It should make them companions for some limited amount of time, at least until they would have an argument and part ways which eventually happened to all humans. Nicoló sighed.

“Far away from here.”

“Hm.”

Was he thinking the same? 

Nicoló looked away cringing. “We could… travel together for a while?”

“Me, travelling with a crusader? You must be joking.” Yusuf got on his horse. Why was he like that? 

Stray dogs tend to form groups at times, and they travel together and share their stolen goods. They form bonds, too, because dogs came from wolves, and wolves are hunting in groups. Beaten dogs, rallying together, looking for a place to shelter themselves from the rain. Humans were a lot like dogs.

  
  
  


In the journey of Saint Brendan, as he travels by boat along with others, a sea creature approaches their boat but God shifts the sea and protects them. Another sea monster comes and kills the first, whose meat the monks eat once it is all over. Their horses were the boat and the sun the monster. Yusuf guided his horse with his legs only while he went to find something for Nicoló to _wear._ Where did he get all these things from? In his defense, Nicoló had died a lot and that would have given him plenty of time to gather. Or steal. _Stealing is a bad word._

“You don’t want to go back to your people?” Nicoló asked as they reached bright sunlight.

“I would love to, but your friends set the whole city aflame and frankly, my dear, I do not have anywhere to go.”

“Your home was there?” 

“No, my home was somewhere else, but that home doesn’t exist anymore and my own, temporary home with everything I owned used to be in that city until I decided it was a great idea to help defend my city, which didn’t turn out quite as I thought.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault.”

“Oh, it kind of is.”

“I heard you talk when you were angry. I don’t think it was. And I also don’t believe it was you personally who set my city on fire, although you’re rather fiery, if I may say so.”

“Can we please forget about that?”

“No.”

Nicoló sighed. This surely was God’s punishment for stealing and lying. 

Then, sometime later after both returned to silence, Yusuf said: “I have no desire to return to a war about two sides who feel it’s necessary to kill each other over something one should like each other for.”

Nicoló tried to understand but everything hurt. 

“You could go back and celebrate with your people, instead you go home. Why?” 

“Why do you ask so many questions?”

“I’m interested.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Yusuf punched his upper arm, but not to hurt him, only to show him he found something to wear and replace his dirty, bloody, destroyed garments. Apparently, his clothes didn’t grow back together properly unlike his skin and bones. Did he want him to change here, on his horse? Nicoló beheld him with an expression of disbelief. 

“I have seen naked, pale men before, my dear friend. You won’t hurt me.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ve seen me naked, thank you.”

“I forgot that you are a monk.”

“I’m not a monk!”

They looked at each other as people, passing them, beheld them. The desert wasn’t as void of people as some might think: women who brought water home, men caring for kettle and horses, a few traders. Nicoló took the tunic and slid down his horse to approach the market. Yusuf followed him. He checked some fabrics and talked to the tradeswoman in a language native to this place. Nicoló watched them grumpy, the sand in his eyes hurt, and rubbed them but it didn’t help. Yusuf gave the woman something and he returned with bright brown fabric. 

“Let’s find some adequate place to change then, no?” He said.

Nicoló didn’t feel like speaking anymore and just walked on. They found shelter in the stable of a local farmer. This made him feel like they were re-enacting the scene with Mary and Joseph. He snorted. 

Their developing companionship was the babe Jesus. He changed behind a wall and Yusuf just stood there, counting the goats, so he thought. He chewed on a carrot like an anxious rabbit. “Since we can’t die,” Yusuf proposed, “we can earn coin by doing mercenary work.”

“Great.” Nicoló said deadpan from his spot.

“Do you have a better idea?” Yusuf tilted his head.

Nicoló wanted to say something but he decided not to, because his humor ended up in the gutter. He rolled up his destroyed set of clothing and carried it out to where Yusuf stood. He gave him a once over which annoyed Nicoló. “Look at you!”

Nicoló rolled his eyes and walked to their horses.

  
  


They decided to travel north along the coast, because the coast, concerning to Yusuf, was at its most beautiful in autumn. Yusuf also taught him how to wrap the fabric around his head to protect himself from the sun. He talked and talked and Nicoló just stared right through him. The little girl abandoned him, nobody was here except for this stranger who never stopped talking. He still felt empty and useless. God punished him, his back hurt and he would feel that for all eternity. All he needed was a bird shitting on his head. 

Seagulls gathered around fishing boats carrying few people across soft waves. Water reflected orange sunlight. Yusuf kept himself occupied by drawing into something like a book. Reminded Nicoló of his scripture studies. _He was glad that these days were over._ What did he do?

He snuck a glance at him who had pulled down his shawl, his curls wiggled because of the wind, little freckles showed due to the constant exposure to a relentless sun. Yusuf then looked at him, too, and Nicoló coyly looked ahead.

He heard Yusuf make a noise. 

“So, have you been a monk or not?”

Nicoló didn’t want to look at him because he got caught. His ears were hot and so was the tip of his nose. “I was once, yes.”

Yusuf snickered. 

“What is so funny about that?”

“You must have been a very angry monk! Shaking your fist at poor peasants who don’t understand that they can’t fuck a loaf of bread.”

He sighed. “What are you then? A philosopher? Sure fucking sound like it.”

“Oh, spicy words.” Yusuf’s voice sounded full of delight. Then, after calming down, he answered: “No, I’ve been a merchant.”

“What did you trade? Quackery?” 

Yusuf now ruffled his brow and looked a little touched, which Nicoló noticed as he gave him a look out of the corner of his eye.

“Fabrics.”

“Oh, alright.”

Pouting, Yusuf sat more comfortably on his horse. “Did they kick you out of the monastery because you were mean?”

“I left because I was bored.”

“Whatever might be true.” Yusuf raised his little book. “I drew the portrait of the devil himself.”

Nicoló looked and found out it was a sketch of himself. Talented. Yet, Nicoló’s irritation increased.

“I wish that I could kill you.”

“We can do that! Why not in front of everyone at the beach down there? Earn some coin with it!”

Nicoló rubbed his face and sighed into his palms. 

  
  
  
  


The ruins to the coast told of a time of grandeur. Nicoló liked those. Temples, manifold, were reused and turned into something else. His teachers taught him about the old Gods they’ve turned into demons, into their traditions and their mythologies. Nicoló studied Horace and Cicero, sometimes Plato. That was his work and Andrea urged him to do so. He remembered the words as he watched pillars, erected at the shore to support those temples now of different use. A memorial of a time different than today, and today fell apart over merely two Gods. He thought too much. Nicoló remembered that he’s never once been to Rome. All the roads lead there, how come he never found them?

They rode a week past the old coast with it’s bright stone temples. With its beautiful trees, the blue waters, the hot sun becoming cooler and cooler, the days a little stiffer. He forgot to count the days as he watched Yusuf refill the water and let the horses drink at a river. Somehow, Nicoló thought, this looked familiar. Perhaps his mind played tricks on him. In this time he learned nothing much about his companion, just that he liked to argue, to draw, to joke, and to look at people as though he wanted to undress them. Most of those people were men. That reminded him of something and so he attempted to not think about that. He blinked and watched the river.

He needed to piss.

“Can you fish?” Nicoló asked.

Yusuf frowned. “Yes?”

“We should catch some fish.”

“You mean, I should catch a fish while you take a nap? No, my dear friend, I won’t.”

“I just want to take a shit in peace, may I?”

“Please don’t spoil the water with your dirty shit, curd man.”

“Can you please stop calling me that?”

“No.”

“Alright, your majesty.”

Yusuf looked at him without any expression on his face, which he considered the very first time that this man did not display any form of emotional response. Just like a fish. There. Staring. His mouth remained closed though. Then he winked. Nicoló choked on his own saliva, turned his back to him and left. He needed to wee very badly.

A good place to wee for him was behind a bush where he wouldn’t expose his bleak backside to anyone, including unsuspecting deer. As he returned, he passed a tree with berries and plucked some off the green they grew on. He knew these berries and tasted one with caution. He should wash them first because he remembered brother Fridel caught worms that way. Too late. What happened if his body would be infested by worms? Would they perennially feast on his insides? It was nice having some friends who didn’t talk much?

He found Yusuf trying to catch fish. It was a very blissful view. He should’ve expected a merchant to be rather useless when it came to fishing and hunting. 

“Do you need help?” Nicoló asked.

“No!” Yusuf said with a determined face. Then he watched him eat berries. “Or, maybe I do, since you enjoy these handful of berries that will soon have you shitting worms.”

“With worms we can fish more efficiently. I do everything for a reason.”

“Do you really think I will pick the worms from your ass and fish with them?”

Nicoló always had a very vivid imagination and he’d tried not to visualize that. He walked over, took the makeshift spear and did it himself. 

“Did they teach you how to do that in your monastery?” 

“I had to help my mother with it as my brothers were all useless and spoiled, as most men are, not knowing how to fucking catch a fish.”

Yusuf sat down. 

“So, now you’ll watch me doing the work?” He aimed at a fish, it escaped. Frustrated, he blew the hair out of his face.

“I am trying to learn.” 

Nicoló hated it being watched. That brought his mind back to the part in which Yusuf liked staring at people for too long as if he could read their minds and make conclusions from whatever he just found. He’d stare and stare and then looked away. That’s what he did right now. Once, long ago, his mother tried to marry him to someone so that also he would benefit from a proper partnership with an unsuspecting child of God. However, Nicoló ran away and his parents looked for him for days. After they found him in a small chapel nearby, he blurted out that he cannot marry because the only person he loves was Jesus. It turns out that his name wasn’t Jesus, but Alberto, but Alberto wasn’t in the know of many things, and so Nicoló became a monk.

He gave up. Inhaled and looked at the sky, sighed overloaded, and stabbed into the water with frustration. He actually caught a fish.

Yusuf cooed. “The one whose hand is in fire is not like the one whose hand is in water!” Then he looked like he contemplated what he just said. “That was a literal translation, don’t mind me.”

“Then you should make a _fire._ ”

He made a fire, Nicoló took care of the fish. Then the night came and the river sang them to sleep except Nicoló kept struggling with that. He rolled around and grunted. Something about sleeping outdoors caused him discomfort and noticing that made him sleepless. It was the exposure, the fact that nature surrounded them and nature should never be underestimated. Although he couldn’t die, the fear remained. He must’ve radiated anxiety because Yusuf’s hand rested on his upper arm and he patted it once, then its weight lingered on him and this somehow calmed him down.

  
  
  


The closer they came to home, the stranger his mind became because it has been more than a year, and yet nothing seemed to have changed. People remained the same, roads remained the same, here and there a person speaking about the crusades. He wanted to interfere but didn’t. Let people think what they want to think. He watched Yusuf. What if they killed each other and he would have rotted away , eaten by birds of prey all lingering on his slowly disappearing corpse? 

Bleak, autumn weather shrouded the forest in grey, one could barely see the roads. Sounds disappeared and he listened to the birds. They always gave away danger. They flew away, mainly because of them. He wanted a bath and a bed other than the cold ground of the forest. 

Not far ahead of them, a horse pulled a carriage, on it a man and woman talking in an accent Nicoló barely understood - they came from Venice. Probably merchants. Perhaps a different kind. He tried to understand but most of it was domestic sweet talk of a freshly married couple talking about what to name their children. He found that endearing.

“I like snow.” Yusuf remarked. 

“It won’t be snowing for another month or two.” Nicoló said.

“If we keep up this pace, we will be at your home right in time for the first snow then.”

Suddenly, a loud thud scared more birds and the horse on the carriage protested. Perhaps a wild prey animal trying to find dinner? Both looked in the same direction but couldn’t see much yet. He remembered running from a wild boar once. That has been the day that he learned to run fast.

Then Yusuf sped up and disappeared into the wall of fog before them, he heard loud impact, a surprised and astounded shriek, and another, and then a very northern voice swearing. He frowned and followed, got off his horse and as he prepared his sword to defend himself, an arm swinging a blade somehow ended up tumbling toward him. Another short blade of a hunting knife came flying at him and he caught it midair. Astonished by his skill, he looked at it. His hand bled. Good thing that it wouldn’t make a difference. He dropped it and kicked someone in the stomach, pushed them back into the fog and all Nicoló saw was a bloody blade pierced through his chest. The tip pointed at his face. Then the highwayman toppled over and landed on the muddy road.

“Oh, we make quite the team!” Yusuf expelled. 

Nicoló remained nonverbal and walked toward the front of the carriage, Yusuf followed him not much later.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at the newlyweds who stared in shock. The husband clung to his wife, who held onto her embroidery looking both men in the eyes.

“We don’t have anything of worth to you.” She said.

Yusuf and Nicoló exchanged looks. 

“Maybe, get a new husband.” Yusuf said. “It’s just a thought. I’ll take him, you take mine.” He pointed at Nicoló.

“Fuck you!” Nicoló yelled. It didn’t anger Nicoló how he referred to him, but the very fact that Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani would exchange him for a merchant from Venice was an enraging fact. _We just bonded._

  
  
  


Due to this outstanding truth being shared, after them looking through the highwaymen’s belongings, he avoided talking to him. Why did that bother him, after all? Perhaps Yusuf needed a more outgoing companion. Perhaps Nicoló’s offense came from his innermost, which branded Yusuf as a mutual lost stray dog with a complicated condition, which was _being unable to die_. That’s one reason for bonding. Nicoló tried to find a second one since he lacked charisma and joy these days. He was just a boring bush while Yusuf stood tall like a birch tree. 

“Why are you so quiet, curd man?”

“Hm.”

“Hm? That’s very elaborative.”

“We’re almost there.”

“Ah, I see.” Yusuf tried to find buildings.

What would Yusuf do once Nicoló returned home? Would he stay? Would he move on? Nicoló didn’t know what he should do himself: stay here forever, or travel onward? He always wanted to see different places in different regions: he has heard of great places in the east and the north, eager to find out whether the stories were true. On the other hand he would appreciate quietude. 

At the fields he left ages ago, Yusuf marvelled at the mountains in the background. Now with the fog slowly lifting, he could see their silhouettes as a dying sun lit them up just enough. Black, looming, foretelling a great misery. That misery, to his surprise, would be the monks shuffling toward them as they saw visitors at the gate. One of them poked their head outside. Another one hurried to his side and his dark brows moved into a frown, leaving him with a sour expression on his face.

“Oh.” He whispered. “Is it you, Nicoló?”

Should he say no, that it wasn’t him? Andrea would kill him, and he might succeed.

Then the monk came closer, looked up to him and investigated his face. “Did war suit your needs?”

Judgemental. He respected that.

“No.”

“Is that why you’re here? After all this time? How many have you killed?”

“Where is Andrea?”

His eyes stayed fixated on Nicoló, examining every inch, counting every wrinkle that wasn’t there before. And he noticed a scar and a pair of eyes that dulled since the last time he saw them. He turned around wordless and Nicoló followed, Yusuf, himself rather quiet, walked on, too.

The monk stopped at the stables and Nicoló let go of his horse, he gestured Yusuf to do the same and he complied as quietly as Nicoló. Their horses pushed through the hay and joined one other.

All the monks ignored him, and he wasn’t in the mood to ask why. He just followed the shuffling man who led them to a door, and he stopped again once in front of it.

“Since you thought there is more importance to killing people than to aid them, a few things changed.”

“Oh, I haven’t noticed.” He said calm, yet irritated.

The monk scolded him with a harsh look. “Father Andrea is very sick. I’ll leave you to it, however don’t strain him too much, _father Nicoló._ ” He sounded condescending. He had every right to be angry with him. Yusuf made a noise. The monk left them at the door.

“Hm, so you were a priest.” Yusuf whispered. “I wait here.” He walked toward the arched windows offering a view into a now mostly colorless garden where trees dropped their leaves, which covered the soil in orange and yellow.

Nicoló pushed the door open and spied inside a room, dimly lit by the weak light of day. The garden behind the window invited small birds who remained in the cold months. He didn’t want to enter because he feared what he was about to see: a sick old man on a deathbed. Andrea moved and opened one eye and from over here he didn’t look bad. At least he appeared as peaceful as always. It took him a moment to realize it was Nicoló who stood there at the door, and then he moved his head to see more of him.

“You’re alive.” He said. “I thought to never see you again before I die.”

Nicoló didn’t know what to say. Guilt made his heart pound and his face burn. Not that death would have avoided Andrea in Nicoló’s presence, however he could have had more time with him, instead he ran away to learn about the art of war. If one could call that art. Everything seemed more senseless than ever. Andrea’s hand moved and it invited him over to sit with him. He looked for a chair and pushed it next to the bed.

“Where have you been, boy?” 

From this shorter distance, Andrea looked grey and old. All the color left his face, and his hair clung to this skin like a dead animal’s fur drenched in blood. 

“I traveled.”

“Have you been to Rome?”

“No, not Rome.” He fidgeted with his fingers: they restlessly played with his tunic. “I’ve been to the walls of Jerusalem but I never made it to see the city myself.”

“Have you been fighting?” He frowned. What a strange way to ask. “You look tired, Nicoló.”

“Are you not angry with me?” 

“No, why would I be?” Andrea gave him every bit of his attention, which might not come in high volume anymore. All the little fire he had left in him focused on Nicoló, who selfishly took it to warm his cold hands. 

“You seem very agitated and troubled.”

“If I would have known, I wouldn’t have left in the first place.”

“Oh, we all leave this earth one day. Fret not, you traveled, seen places, and now you have come back right on time. I asked for you to come back and say goodbye. He listened to my little voice. He might listen again and gives me a garden.” Andrea snickered. Then he fell silent for a moment.

“I have always been very proud of you, you must know, and that will never change no matter what you do. I, too, have done strange things when I was young. I drank a lot, I started fights. What matters most is that you found your way back even though it might just be temporary.”

He reached out and took Nicoló’s hand in his. Then he closed his eyes. “You always were a special boy who grew into an interesting man. In a good way. Way too empathetic, way too caring, too analytical for your own good sometimes, but those are all great qualities. Don’t feel bad.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, not for that but for giving me a home when I needed one.”

“Now, don’t be such a grouch on my final days. You deserved all of it. Tell me about your journey.”

“I, eh,” he tried to think about something. How should he phrase it? “I, eh, I saw old architecture, those temples along the coast. There were few statues left, too, hidden between rocks and trees. The harbors reminded me of home.”

“Hm. The smell of fish made you homesick?”

Nicoló smiled poignant, it vanished quickly. 

“Did you make a friend? I can sense them out there sneaking around like a little cat.”

Nicoló left the door open. Of course he did, he always forgot. “Well, something like that.”

“Good, so you won’t be alone. Who is it?”

“A man I met.”

Andrea glanced at him and snickered. “A man you’ve met without name or story, I see.”

He squeezed his hand and fell asleep. Nicoló stayed here until he, as well, fell asleep. His dreams were vague plays of past and present. Yet, nobody he knew showed and dreamed along with him or told him a story. Nobody sang and nobody watched. A few nightly birds sang to the moon outside of his dream and he listened to them as he woke up. The grip on his hand was cold now, and it seemed that Andrea, after getting his last wish granted, finally received his garden in fields of gold that never withered.

  
  
  


Nicoló wandered for a day or two, or maybe a few hours, he couldn’t specify the time as he tried to force himself to be emotional. Nothing came in and nothing came out. All that died on the battlefield was his emotional capacity. He looked at the cross, stared at the fire, he even prayed once. He didn’t do that for a long time, not like this at least. As an intrusive sun burned down on his head, he walked to the now barren fields and counted the crows: ten. They all hopped in a dance of death. Nicoló lay down and stared at a blue sky. Then he heard approaching footsteps, but those of leatherbound boots, a heavy trudge. Someone who has lived for a long time came to him, someone who carried a burden, too. 

Yusuf lay down, too. But his feet pointed west, while Nicoló’s pointed east, and their heads didn’t quite yet touch. 

“Was he a good friend to you?”

“He was my teacher.”

“He apparently taught you many things.”

“I do not wish to talk about that.”

“You don’t have to.”

Nicoló felt as though someone sat on his chest and he couldn’t breathe. He forced himself to and inhaled sharp. He forced his voice to sound calm and strong, too, as he spoke: “What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where will you go now?”

“I don’t know. These monks here have warmed up to my presence, I think. They began talking to me and even fed me. You shouldn’t leave them as they are caring people. Staying here will be good for you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“You may see things from a very specific, difficult angle but you may also just sit up and not do that, you know? You’ve such a restrictive thought process sometimes. Think twice about it, maybe more. Then perhaps, you can weigh the positives against the negatives. Or, you could just go somewhere, let your feet carry you, whether that is to a faraway place or the fire in your house.”

Nicoló closed his eyes because they burned. 

“Drink some wine until you pass out, or whatever you people do here for fun. What do you do for fun? Bake bread? Fold nightgowns?”

Now Nicoló had to laugh and it was ugly because his eyes were wet and his nose congested. What did he do for fun? That was a magnificent question which he couldn’t answer.

“What do _you_ do for fun?” He returned the question quietly.

“Well.” Yusuf pondered. Nicoló could almost hear his thoughts. 

In an almost naive voice, Nicoló uttered an idea: “I want to go to visit Rome.”

Yusuf reached up and patted his shoulder. “Then we should go there.”

His hand rested there. Hot and comforting. 

  
  
  


_In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, Keats writes about a nightingale, the immortal creature that opposes the mortality of men. It describes how both beautiful and terrible death is, how hiding in an imaginary world soothes because the waking world is chaos and pain. A nightingale’s song is forever, and I have sung many lullabies to dying people._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3: Antipodes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As both men travel along together, they grow closer to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not publishing sooner but I initially thought this chapter was too dull to publish, however, I read it again and actually like it. Third chapters are a pain. I hope you enjoy it and as always, there is a warning for depiction of violence, graphic language, and blood. So keep that in mind! :)

When God passed judgment

He helped no shallow hypocrites.

I'll please you with everything I have,

Until then, please help me.

— Hula, Sólstafir

  
  


Thunderclap. Howling wind. The forest turned white in relentless fog lit by lightning, the trees stood dark in contrast. Another bolt hit, more rumbling resounded like a drum playing to wake old ghosts. Did people rush back and forth between the trunks or did he imagine that? Their horses neighed in the distance; after another bolt, as it went dark, he moved on . He heard something in the air: a thrown object, swishing past his face hitting the tree next to him instead of his face as he stepped aside on time. A small, one-handed axe. Nicoló looked at the work and found it rather simplistic. He turned and pulled it out of the tree’s bark. 

Unimpressed, he walked to a small glade in front of him which he almost missed because of the weather conditions. He stood still as he reached its edge and listened during a break between thunderclaps. Beautiful silence. He closed his eyes and enjoyed it for a moment. He counted how long it took between the light and the noise, and moved whenever the thunder rolled through the area. It would distract their antagonists. As lighting struck again and he found himself in the midst of the glade, he saw that their antagonists now surrounded him. Each of them held up a bow, five in total, and they aimed their arrows at him. He tried to look at their faces and mumbled a prayer for their redemption because everyone deserves forgiveness, even the people who decided to take advantage of others. Perhaps one day he’d think differently about that but the future was an unknown, terrifying thing occupying him for too long already.

Nicoló looked at the sky as thunder returned, rolled his eyes, and said: “This is fine.”

Then the arrows hit him all at once and while he has been getting used to the pain in the past few weeks, he still hated it. He looked down at the one in his chest and broke it off. Bleeding felt disgusting and he hated it when warm blood ran out of wounds across his flesh. 

“Why is it always me who gets the arrows?” He complained. 

Someone rushed by and the blade reflected another flash. A swirl here, a twirl there. It looked like a little dance while Nicoló tried to stay balanced because in the meantime, four more arrows bore through his skin and muscle, and one ended up in his left buttock. How uncomfortable. He beheaded one of the highwaymen nonchalantly with his blade before grunting and looking annoyed at his companion. He spit out blood.

“I am so entirely done for today.” He gestured with one hand, wagged his finger to emphasize on his statement and dropped his limb. “I’ve got an arrow in my ass!”

“My poor friend.” Yusuf came over, stepping across a dead man as he did. He looked at him concerned but Nicoló knew he wasn’t. Was he? “Do you want me to pull it out for you?”

“No!” Nicoló replied sarcastically. “I do enjoy the sensation, thank you.”

Nicoló then pulled it out himself. He looked at the sharp tip. “Oh,” he then said, “they poisoned them! Magnificent! I always wa-”.

  
  


He woke up on the back of his horse, hanging, while it trotted onward. Nicoló’s head hurt. Even more so as the thunderstorm passed and now an early spring sun knocked him back into reality. He groaned loud and stared at his horse’s neck before he shot up and looked down: no arrows. He let out a relieved sigh and adjusted on his horse. Next to him on the other horse, Yusuf scribbled on his paper: slightly bent forward, steering the horse with his thighs as usual. 

“I like how you drool in your sleep, although this time it might have been the fault of some herb called hemlock. So, poisoning doesn’t kill you, or me, either! Isn’t that great? How do you feel?”

“I want to rip my intestines out and toss them away. Very kind of you to ask.”

Aside from a penetrating pain in his head, hunger caused more irritation. He was afraid that as soon as he ate, though, he would shit and vomit it all out again. 

They were to collect their reward and Yusuf made sure to carry the evidence, the people’s heads, with him. Those people were harassing a settlement nearby with extortions and other rigmarole. Both decided that if they were to kill for someone, there must have been a good reason behind it because otherwise the bread they bought tasted stale and the water turned into piss. Or: they didn’t feel good about it. The settlement actually was a tiny village somewhere in the outskirts of Konstanz. It consisted of a chapel, naturally, three big houses, two farms, and a little stable for their kettle. No horses, no soldiers, three men, five women, eleven children, one irritated elder. Nicoló wanted to stay on his horse as they reached the farthest of the houses to present their victory and gather the money. It wasn't much, but enough to pay for food and shelter. He felt safe on his horse. He slid off and rubbed his butt.

The farmer came to greet them and she wiped her hands off on her apron. The heads didn't bother her. Her red hair framed her down-to-earth face and she nodded dryly. She represented the spirit of all the sober people of this area with their cold attitudes.

"Thank you. Come with me to pick up your reward." She moved on and her trail followed an eager dog. Grey fur except for white socks. A loyal friend. He didn't bark at them once. 

She moved into her house and picked up a satchel. 

"You can give the heads to the pigs."

Nicoló blinked. He wanted to throw up. 

Yusuf winced as he took the satchel. Then he shuddered because he seemed as uncomfortable as Nicoló at the idea of pigs eating human remains. The farmer noticed. 

"Just leave them here. Funny how you killed them, but feeding their heads to animals unsettles you."

Both wrinkled their noses. 

She exhaled. "We have a small bath house and an extra bed. If you want, you can use it for the night."

"You already paid us enough, thank you" Nicoló wanted to flee. 

Her expression changed from serious to maternal within the wink of an eye. "Son, you look horrible."

"Thank you. They shot an arrow into my ass."

"Oh!" Now it was her who cringed. 

Yusuf nudged his side with his elbow, hinting at the mutual need for a bath and a comfortable bed to sleep in for a change. 

Nicoló complied. "Please don't feed me to the pigs when I die."

"No, I will make a scarecrow out of you." She joked. 

Yusuf laughed. 

  
  
  


Nicoló found it surprising that this small place owned a bathtub big enough to wash an entire family. It reminded him of the bath houses back when he traveled alongside Gervase, just smaller- which he avoided using as he hated being watched. He sunk into the hot water and finally, his body stopped hurting. He longed for such an experience for months. A damp cloth wasn't the same although it served its purpose of cleaning him enough to not smell like an old cheese. Right now, he felt like royalty. He never thought that hot water inside a tub would make him this happy. How many people bathed in here before them? Hopefully someone because he would feel bad for spoiling the water with his atrociously dirty body. 

He closed his eyes and dreamed of the sea during summer. The salt in the air and the endless, endless amount of seagulls. Longing for calmness, his fingers played in the water and created little waves.

"I have an idea!" 

His eyes sprung open as he heard Yusuf joining. Could he just once leave him alone? 

"Since we haven't gotten to Rome yet, we should travel farther north. I know a great place!" 

He dropped his last cloth protecting Nicoló from an unholy view and plopped into the water on the far end of the tub to his opposite. Nicoló submerged enough to have his nose above water for air. 

This also was the tenth time that an eager Yusuf proposed to  _ go somewhere else since they haven't been to Rome yet _ and Nicoló assumed it was because they constantly went somewhere else. He didn't blame him. 

Yusuf looked at him. 

"Is that helping?" He pointed at him being almost entirely underneath the surface. Then he did the same, trying to find out if there was healing value in nearly drowning himself. Nicoló's head raised a little. 

"Yes."

"Is your buttock still sore?" 

"Where do you want to go this time?" 

"Are you in a hurry?" 

Nicoló rolled his eyes.

They stayed at the monastery for the coldest winter months. By the advent of February, they departed. Winters here were harsher than home as the snow still lingered on the ground like a thick blanket. He never minded the cold, but this area was ferocious. 

He didn't want to go north. Perhaps all Yusuf wanted was more snow and to avoid spring at all costs. During their time at the monastery they mainly avoided each other and for a good reason, as both needed some amount of time for introspection. Nicoló found himself at a certain loss of faith. He couldn’t explain it. Now, after this time of avoidance Yusuf sat in the same bathtub, naked, trying to untangle his hair. Nicoló assumed it could either be a cultural difference or a personal sign of trust. He didn’t dare to ask.

“I don’t know exactly, but the north seems an interesting place.”

“You said you know just the place.”

“Perhaps I have thought again.”

“Your mind is as tangled as your hair.”

Yusuf stopped and looked through a curtain of damp curls. “Do you have a comb?”

“No, but I have a sharp knife!”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Take some of the reward and get yourself a comb in the place up north where you want to go. Oh, and get me something to stuff my ears with so I can enjoy my peace from you.”

Nicoló leaned back and closed his eyes.

It occurred to him he never asked Yusuf about his family. Did he lose them? Did his parents still roam the world somewhere? Something hindered him from asking personal questions and he was tired of talking or answering questions about himself, which were in fact too short to draw conclusions. He drifted off to thinking that, as it seemed by now, they both had all eternity to do things. How long would that be? What would the world look like in three-hundred years from now? Would it still exist? Should they just change their ways, the work they decided to do some time ago, and just live to be merchants? Should they part ways? He got used to his company and suddenly felt a little anxious about having to be on his own. Alone forever. What a horrible thought.

Nicoló hated his thoughts and looked for his linen cloth to wrap himself in and dry up. He fished for it and pulled it up from the chair. How would he get out? He wasn’t fond of showing off. He grunted. 

“I won’t look.” Yusuf nonchalantly stated. He looked and noticed Nicoló’s distrust. 

“You’re such a monk!” He put his view on something else. Nicoló escaped, wrapped up, and left him alone.

  
  
  


_ The train went from the south of Germany to the north. Screeching tires. Green leather seats. People carried their suitcases, ready to arrive at a destination and yet we’ve had none. 1988. A year before the Berlin wall would be destroyed but the sentiment of East and West would remain for decades onward. Children ate ice cream here in the West as they did in the East. Summer tasted the same in any part of the divided country and I knew, because that’s where we came from. When you’ve got no true limit of time it is the small things that make it worthwhile, such as a smile, a little sketch, a softly spoken word, or the taste of ice cream during a hot summer’s day while you’re on a train to Hamburg.  _

Nicoló stood outside in the cold, staring into the small flame of a torch. Everyone hid in their houses and shared stories of summer. It surprised him that he still knew what hot sun felt like. Snow began to fall and the forest ahead hid deer from people’s sights. He pulled the coat tighter around his shoulders and watched his eyes play tricks on him again, with shadows dancing in the dark, with tree barks looking like merry spirits of winter, dancing a little to warm themselves up. He walked away from the torch to enjoy the crisp darkness. Dark forests harbored such mystery and he hoped to, one day, not be as scared of this mystery as he used to be. He had nothing to fear anyway.

That, as well, scared him.

If there was nothing left to fear, so he thought, then he could easily become ruthless and that was something he never wanted to be. He kept staring into the forest. A child’s laughter resounded and he looked for the source as the noise came from the house on his left, or rather from outside, yet he saw nobody. Dancing trees stood still and a little girl looked at him with her long, white dress. There she was? Where has she been? Hiding in the snow? Reminding him of how important she was? She giggled and ran away, startled by a sudden move behind him.

“Is something out here?” Yusuf asked.

“No.”

“Hm. I could’ve sworn I’ve heard something?” 

His eyes, which he always noticed lately, rested on Nicoló for a while, then he noticed minor motions and Yusuf put his coat on top of Nicolo’s. He looked at it. 

“Your lips are turning blue.” 

Yusuf squeezed his shoulders and went inside. Nicoló hasn’t even noticed how stiff his fingers were and the coat added some warmth. Perhaps he should return inside, too? But the dancing trees distracted him. He looked up at the falling snow and the dark brown sky above him. Where did the girl go? Did Yusuf scare her? Was he scared of him? As he wanted to turn, a group of deer passed nearby, one by one hopping across a fallen tree. They hurried into the forest eager to forage and the traces they left soon covered, forgotten, another journey made. They asked him to remember them along with everyone he admired once. Leaving trails in the snow for him to find, fading away as time passed.

He picked up the torch and hung it next to the entrance outside, went into their shelter and locked the door. The warmth inside, created by fire, collided against him. He took off both coats and sat in front of the flames, pulling off his boots, warming his feet. Yusuf already fell asleep on the bed made of wood, straw, and linen. His arm stretched out toward the fire, the book there next to it. 

Nicoló’s persistent interest in the sketches lured him to take a look. Whom did it hurt? He carefully reached out and picked it up with care, holding it under his nose to see what he actually created over the past months.

A story told in artwork began with busy markets. None of his business. It felt like reading a diary and he didn’t want to spy on his past.  _ Did he now.  _ He looked at the old ones again: markets, a woman with a shawl, a child at a well playing with a dog. The sketches showed what Jerusalem looked like. Nicoló stood still at the buildings for too long and mused about their splendour, about the architecture and the flora. Then it changed to wilderness, a camel, and then there were sketches of him. That made Nicoló a bit uncomfortable but he looked at them and those creations taught him how others, and especially Yusuf, saw him because it contradicted the perception he had of himself. Did he look like that, truly? He never thought so. It flattered him. He suddenly felt somewhat more confident than before. Nicoló beheld it for too long and wondered what he drew just now, or planned to. A girl in a boat.

Unfinished. Nicoló placed the book on the ground next to the bed and thought to sleep right in front of the fire even though the bed was big enough for three people, but Yusuf tended to move too much. So has Nicoló woken up to an arm on his face once, pushed into the wall, almost fallen down from a platform. 

He rubbed his eyes and moved to lie on the edge of the bed close to the fire, taking little space, and watched the flames dance. No matter how hard he tried: he couldn’t fall asleep but passed out instead. Then he noticed how cold his body was and pulled a linen cover across his arms which didn’t help much. He complained to himself and went back to the book before him, down there on the ground, browsing with one finger while resting on his other arm. While he did, he subconsciously hummed to himself. 

“I didn’t know that a man like you could sing like that.” Yusuf remarked sleepily.

What did he even mean by that? “Your insults become tamer by the day.”

“Oh, it wasn’t an insult. Please continue.”

“I thought you were sleeping.” Nicoló rolled on his back, holding the book with an unabashed attitude up in front of his face.

“Who gave you the permission to look at that?”

“I did.”

Yusuf sighed. “You’re an unbearable, stone-cold sober monk without manners.”

Then he turned and literally showed him his cold shoulder. A smirk snuck across Nicoló’s face.

  
  
  


With early morning as their companion, they traveled onward toward the bigger town nearby because that’s where the horses rode to. They went south though, because Yusuf gave in to Nicoló and after a long argument, they settled. Yusuf did love the cold weather. Nicoló didn’t get it.  _ Snow will come back every year and soon, so many years will come that you will be sick of it.  _

He could not sleep the longest part of the night, and as he finally found some, a nightmare pushed him back into reality. Not such a nightmare that rattles your bones and makes you nauseous. A nightmare that lingered, and he woke up so loudly from it that Yusuf woke, too. Nicoló remembered the face of a woman as though she was real but that was nonsense. Said dream harbored such anger and violence that he couldn’t quite shake it off, as if someone held tight onto his shoulders and stayed with him, whispering words into his ear, seducing him with terrible emotions.

In a town hidden between mountains, they stopped for a break and Yusuf’s coat swept the dirty street of a place in brown, green, and red colors. Tiny snowflakes came falling from the sky, getting caught in Yusuf’s curls without melting away. He looked like a Christmas miracle that way which came too late and lingered for a long time, until Easter as it disappeared out of a sudden and without further notice, without a farewell, nothing to ever remember it’s been here in the first place. Would people know them at some point of their journey?

They refilled their stock at the market.

“Maybe we should be merchants instead.” Nicoló thought aloud.

“Oh, yes,” Yusuf paid for bread. “Great idea with you there, being an insufferable wagtail and chasing away people with your ever-lasting scowl.”

“I could cut off your cock right here and see if it grows back fast enough for me to do it twice.”

Yusuf laughed. “You can barely look at one, how would you manage to even do that.”

“You want me to demonstrate it?” 

“No.”

Nicoló got himself apples. He liked apples. Then he trudged ahead. The mud resounded with each step and he loved the scent of piss in the morning. He needed beer. Nearby was the local tavern and people gathered around, here and there beggars and other folk. Nicoló gave the beggar at the door two apples and a coin. He entered not caring where he left his companion because he would find him anyway. Whilst looking for a place to drink himself into a stupor to find God again, a woman approached him and she poked his shoulder. Black hair. Long and curly. Her face told many stories. 

“A man like you shouldn’t drink all by himself.” She said.

It took him a while to understand her intentions. Dimples showed as she smiled.

“Oh, no,” He paid for his beverage and turned back to her. “You’re a very charming woman but I am not interested.”

She gave him a once over with her arm propped on the wooden countertop. As she did, Yusuf joined the merry gathering inside. He approached him and looked at her, then at him. There was silence.

Yusuf addressed her: “Don’t you waste your time on this man, he is a monk.”

She snorted. “You don’t look like one?”

“What am I supposed to look like then?”

“A bit balder.” She gestured to her head. 

“My head is too ugly for that!” He grabbed the beer and looked for a table, feeling insulted by everything. Yusuf stood with her and laughed. 

“The only two things he likes holding on to are grudges and bad moods.” Nicoló heard Yusuf say. 

Nicoló wondered if Yusuf actually held more interest in people than just staring at them. Maybe he held back because of his company, or maybe it was something else. However, he excelled at philandering with everyone. Somehow, this upset Nicoló. He nursed his beverage and stared at them both, slightly jealous and uncomfortable because of those feelings. 

Yusuf came to be with him not much later and sat with a plate of food and water. He stuffed his mouth and with the bread on his lips, he noticed Nicoló’s intense gaze across the edge of his cup.

“What is it, curd man? Seen a ghost?”

He just drank and looked away.

Confused, Yusuf fed himself. The woman from earlier passed them and smiled down at Yusuf who winked at her in his naturally charming state of being. 

“You know, if you wanted to fuck her you could just … head on and do it. I’m not going to judge you.”

Yusuf gave him a look. “Do you have feelings, monk?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged and refilled his cup. “I don’t know how fucking works, though, so I come from a place of ignorance on that matter.”

“You could start by fucking yourself first!” Yusuf replied and got up, with his plate, and he left him behind. He watched him and let him be. 

Sometimes, men and their basic thought processes annoyed him and that feeling joined the pot of a lot of feelings, stirred by sleeplessness and a lack of good weather. On the other hand was nothing wrong with the need for company. He found himself longing for it, too. However, that seemed such a strange concept to him. He thought himself to be a hypocrite. Should he apologize? Living in solitude with limited emotional contact had its perks, as he noticed, because it helped not having meaningful bonds. Since Andrea passed away he hadn’t quite thought about that, and about how it affected his overall attitude. It affected him more than he wanted and so did all the other deaths he witnessed - even those of people who didn’t strive to be good although who was he to place judgement on anyone. During his time under Andrea’s guidance he lived to be humble and obedient, he lived to be good and to be patient, and to listen to people and care for them, to not judge them on their past but their present. Who has he become? Did he ever know who he was to begin with? He browsed through a catalogue of things inside his head: he looked for some fracture of being there but he couldn’t find it. 

Should he continue on his own? What would be more of a burden? Loneliness or being the company of someone else? Upholding an image to not disappoint? He stood and left the tavern because he couldn’t take the bard’s hooting anymore. He sounded like a sad cat.

Outside, it started to rain: a sign of spring. Snowflakes thinned and turned into water before they landed on the ground. 

“You leave without your friend?” The woman, now outside, asked him as he went to his horse.

“He is not my friend.” 

“Hm,” she mused. “You’ve been a priest, so he told me?”

“I used to be.”

“When I was still a girl, my mother took me to sit in the chapel and she told me about the stories depicted on the walls. Painted by men who don’t know the meaning of virtue themselves. Nowadays, I don’t feel welcome there, as though I have lost a connection I tried to create. Perhaps it is due to my choices now.”

He looked at her because he knew what she meant, as though he understood her in a way, as though they had something in common. “The only one who can judge you for your choices might be God, but Mary Magdalene was a loyal friend of his son, so he will not meet you with prejudice. And anyone who thinks you’re doing wrong should introspect.”

She looked amused. “You’ve been at the crusades, weren’t you? My brother left long ago and hasn’t come back yet. I can only imagine what people see there. Not that it’s so much different from what we see here.”

He’s been sucked dry by conversations for today. “I am sorry.” 

“Don’t be. However, you should be sorry for yourself, for speaking of a loyal Mary Magdalene and apparently admiring her for such, but denying calling someone who traveled all this way with you a friend. Yes? Speaking of loyalty.”

“Why are you so concerned about that?”

She shrugged. “I have nothing else to do.”

“You do nothing besides looking for lonely men?”

She looked away toward the busy market, then her eyes returned to him. “I garden. I collect stones.”

There was some gentle magnificence about her. Something in her voice, in her appearance. As if an old soul looked for a place to stay and it decided to take a break within her body. An old willow tree resting above a small lake where birds gathered in summer, and deer stood in winter to find shelter from the snow. 

She smiled cheeky. “Anyroad, if you ever need shelter from whatever brings you out here: I live in the outskirts. The path south next to a tower with a red top?” She grabbed her skirt and shuffled on.

He forgot to ask her for her name. Nicoló held his breath and walked back inside. Why? He played with the  _ beshnoodle  _ and he wondered how tall that boy would be today, would he be healthy and happy? They taught him that after death came paradise for those who lived an honest life, would he be denied such peace if he ever died? He was terrified of whatever the future had in store for him.

Nicoló struggled with deciding whether to apologize to Yusuf for his harsh words. The option to leave remained on his mind, or he could ask him to come with him, back into the wilderness lacking any plan as they wandered the world like vagabonds. He found him with a child, doing little tricks and teaching the child how to perform them. Nicoló took the coin out of Yusuf’s hand and gave it to the small person.

“I should have kept my words to myself.” He said. What a bad apology.

Yusuf looked at Nicoló’s hand and waited for something, but it never came. So his eyes wandered around and Nicoló heard him smack his lips.

“I don’t even know why I still bother being at your side because you barely speak and you insult others and yourself with this strange sense of guilt. I tried understanding why, but I don’t.”

Nicoló didn’t want to talk about that. 

Yusuf arched his brows. “And you never talk about it. You never talk about anything. You’re just silent, or you swear, and sometimes you reminisce about architecture and that makes you such a dull person, even my farts have more personality. The only thing we have in common is this … whatever this is. Why do I even bother at all?” 

“You could just turn the other way and go wherever you please.” Nicoló said monotone. “We shall meet again somewhere somehow since we’re not allowed to just die like everyone else.”

A few rowdy visitors at the table next to where they stood talked too loudly which interrupted his hearing. The littlest things caused irritation and he hated himself for that. He never felt like this before. He glared at the group of men with their hysterical voices as Yusuf kept complaining, but he couldn’t entirely make out his words. 

“There is a church over there, perhaps talk to God for a while?” Yusuf half-joked.

“What is it, boy?” One of the men said at the same time. 

Nicoló hated it when people called him that and with his hand resting on the hilt, his face turned toward them. They looked like mercenaries. The same kind of people they were. Useless and spineless. Living for another day. 

Yusuf pulled on Nicoló’s coat to direct his attention. “No… we are leaving.”

Nicoló gave him a look. “We? Didn’t you just agree to go the other way?”

“Isn’t that sword a bit too big for you, lad?” Another man asked him, and the men found a new occupation which was annoying him. Before he could leave it behind him, Yusuf came to his defense for whichever reason. God gave him patience, but he also gave him strength. 

Perhaps the feeling of his dream still held on to him, or he just wanted to unwind: whichever it was, he pulled his sword and pointed the tip at the man’s neck. A broad man, bald, facial hair. One to intimidate people. 

“I have killed hundreds of men like you, another one won’t make much of a difference.”

The man looked up at him. He laughed and reached up to push the blade away with one finger, his other had still resting on the tabletop. Nicoló kept an eye on it. When the mercenary moved to stand, eager to attempt rousing fear in him, Nicoló’s left hand swiftly grabbed the axe he took the other day and slammed it into the wood of the table. He chopped off three of the man’s fingers. 

Nicoló pulled the axe out, sheathed his sword and left.

  
  
  


On his horse, ready to depart, Yusuf stopped him by holding on to the reins of his horse and pressing back against her chest. 

“What besets you?” A genuine question? Nicoló began to doubt his true intentions lately.

“There are plenty of ways to bring back order to your mind.” 

Nicoló forced the reins out of Yusuf’s hands and he let go. He touched his thigh instead to keep him in place as if that helped. “I know for a fact how much everything must be distressing but holding it captive won’t change anything about it.”

“You don’t know me, don’t act as if you do. We travel together because of whatever reason, that doesn’t make us friends, it doesn’t enforce understanding or companionship.”

He looked at his face and noticed a little change there in these eyes, muscles tensing. His jaw locked, then his mouth opened. “I don’t hate you, Nicoló.”

Those words repeated themselves in his head for they sounded indeed genuine. He remembered seeing his face for the first time and since then he never looked at him the same way. Did he forget why they came to be together in the first place? Yusuf sighed and got on his horse.

“We should go now before a horde of relentless mercenaries sour the day for us. Unless you want us to part ways, that is?”

A trick question. He heard it in the tone of his voice. He saw it on his face. It said:  _ I care about you and now I want you to show me that you, too, care about me.  _

He was bad with words in such situations and Yusuf knew it. He hated denying the fact that Yusuf knew him very well by now. Nicoló just nodded and waited for him. Yusuf grunted. 

  
  
  


A few days went by and they surpassed the mountains, temperatures rose slightly, the sun now orange instead of a cold white. Their destination was days away.

Sitting between ruins after a short night’s rest, Nicoló watched a few goats roaming the small elevations around a river. The wind tousled his hair - he wanted to cut it off.

He waited for Yusuf. 

The calmness caressed his mind, his eyes grazed on the scenery and he thought that he couldn’t accept change. The inability to adapt bothered him, and the odd sensation of anger never truly left him. 

“We can go.” Yusuf appeared from the bushes. Nicoló didn’t respond. Responding exhausted him. After not receiving a reply, Yusuf stood behind him and looked at the same things.

“Nicoló?”

“Since that one night, I kept having the same, strange dreams and I often have nightmares. They aren’t nightmares, though, but they make me feel all these anxious and aggressive feelings. Frankly, everything is shit and I have no idea what to do.”

Yusuf stretched behind him and then he sat with him. Minimal space between them remained and he felt his body’s warmth on his. He didn’t mind.

“I had dreams, too, but they didn’t make me angry.”

“Maybe that’s me then, turning into some kind of monster.” Nicoló carelessly dropped the beaded necklace on the empty space to his right. “Although I guess that I’ve become that monster when I joined this farce of a war. And those dreams just show me what I am: an angry brat without good judgement.”

“Why are you always so hard on yourself?”

Nicoló thought about that. He didn’t know. He changed the topic. “Do you think that there are other people like us?”

“You mean: two people who pretend to hate each other because they have these internal struggles they don’t fathom?” He laughed. Yusuf understood his question but he joked about their inability to deal with each other. “Why not?” He then referred to the actual question.

“What if that person in my dreams is that someone?” 

“Oh,” Yusuf wrinkled his nose. 

“We should find them.”

“Yes, because we know where to go?”

“There was a warm place. No desert, though. Sunlit.”

“So many places which fit that description. Perhaps, if it’s true, then we’ll find each other sooner or later. Didn’t you want to go to Rome.”

Nicoló looked at his profile. “Do I, or did someone else?”

Yusuf replied to the look and shortly beheld the few clouds at the canopy above Nicoló’s head. When he returned to his face, his eyes reassured him to understand what he meant. He reached out to pick up the necklace with the cross and placed it in Nicoló’s palm. “I do know you very well, curd man.”

He wanted to stand up and remove his hand, but Nicoló held it tight and forced him back down.

“Do you want to sit here, holding hands, and stare at sunrise until the sun is too hot?” 

“It’s not that hot yet.” Nicoló replied.

Yusuf tried to calm down his constant excitement for travel and watched the sky. He crossed his arms, which amused Ncioló. He was so restless. “Do you have family left?” Nicoló asked cautiously.

“No.” Yusuf replied. “Or, at least I don’t know if I still do. Maybe? I left at a young age to travel.”

“Free to go where you want. Never staying in the same place for long.” 

“Yes? Is there something wrong with that? I never tire of it.”

“I hate it.” Nicoló whispered. “I hate how similar everyone is while they couldn’t be more different. All the places are the same, the only thing that sets them apart are the buildings or the way they talk.”

“You know what I think?” Yusuf asked. Before Nicoló could answer, he already did it himself. “You hate it because you still didn’t mourn your friend, and your past life, and everything you’ve had which somehow just disappeared. Like the knowledge that you’ll die one day. You hate that and nothing else.”

Yusuf knew him so well and he wanted to avoid having his inmost displayed like that. His emotions like wares for sale at a market. 

“Yes, we can go.” Nicoló abruptly announced.

“No! We wanted to watch the sunrise, my friend.” Yusuf shifted so their shoulders touched. Then his voice turned a bit softer. “You should mourn your friend, and when you’re done think about yourself and don’t punish yourself so much. That sunrise is beautiful! You’re going to see so many of them and you should be enjoying that.” 

“I’m going to have to watch them with you, though. I doubt it’ll be joyful.”

“So, you’re admitting that we’re going to be long-time companions?” 

Nicoló groaned. He didn’t mean it like that. Did he? Has Yusuf become the  _ beshnoodle  _ which the child told him about what felt like a century ago?

Yusuf laughed heartily at his little slip and grabbed his head as though Nicoló was a dog. Then he kissed the top of it. “Underneath this dull and rude shell, you’re such a lovable person, Nicoló di Genova.” 

He let go and continued watching the sun. 


End file.
